I am opposed to all the only digital content and the myriads of subscription services

[noname223]

I think for example about the gaming industry. I absolutely despise the development to only digital games. I like to buy games second-hand and I get them this way so much cheaper. These greedy companies know people like me too well and want to prohibit this trick. I think in the future I will live in poverty. So for me it will be impossible to play the games I want. Especially if I can't buy them second hand anymore. Just fuck that. Maybe it is good that I will stop supporting such a greedy industry but damn I will miss video games so fucking much. It is one of my favorite hobbies.

The trend where the industry is going is horrible.

Moreover I don't like all these subscription services in general. If you are forced to have 4-5 subcription services at the same time you will lose track of your budget. This all makes me so cynical. I don't support music subscription services and I try to avoid expensive video streaming platforms. When I compare this development to my childhood it was really better in the past. Profit, profit and profit. Everything needs to be commercalized and no more genuine values. All football/soccer clubs make now advertisements for addictive sports bets or are sponsored by dictatorships.

I really like to have physical products for my money. Digital products can disappear one day. For example if the company goes broke or you lose your password. This development makes me really bitter.

 

[jandek]

Completely agree. These technologies and marketing strategies are superficially convenient to consumers, but really insidious and with many hidden costs. Part of what's painful for me is that I simply don't have the physical space to own things. My biggest vices are probably books and music. I don't mind paying more to have physical copies of things, but I'm already at my limit in terms of space. I live in a small apartment, and the possibility of moving is always over my head, so I simply don't buy anything anymore. I'm grateful for ebooks, but it's really not the same as having a real library. Maybe one day.

 

[Riddle]

Gamepass is actually a really good value and I've played countless games that I wouldn't have normally purchased. Even if you just join for a month you could play one or two $40-$50 titles then cancel your sub. There are some games I would have liked to revisit but there are lot of games I played about 10 hours and knew I would never want to touch it again. Maybe if I was planning living another 10 years some of the games I would probably have wanted to go back and try to actually finish since I usually get bored about halfway through.

I am also a big fan of sports gambling, not addicted, but it is a fun game to me in terms of 'can you beat the books' over time. I only need 2 books so I don't really get pay attention to any ads anymore, which I agree has taken over all of sports programming it seems. If I see a Drew Brees commercial one more time I swear..

So I guess both of the things that you hate brought value to me as a consumer. For other it may not

Remember when they tried to make the super league though? Now that was a shameless money grab that would have altered the staple leagues for the worse. That for sure rubbed me the wrong way and obviously countless others

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I used to hate it too at first but it's become extremely convenient for binging shows or movie series in ways that free/piracy websites couldn't even hope to accomplish.

I will agree that it's a stupid idea for games though, at least as long as the overall infrastructure for the internet continues to be this weak. Digital games themselves are fine because they save a trip to the store but any form of live digital gaming like the Google Stadia or whatever Netflix is planning does seem dumb.

 

[Smart No More]

When it comes to games I absolutely agree. They're so data heavy that even storing them on external storage is prohibiting and if it wasn't there's still the issue of it being restricted by whatever the developers sees fit regardless of whether you paid for it. It's inconvenient to transfer such large amounts of data to a console if you like to play a large range of games and then there's the cost. It's more expensive for less of the value. Not to mention the second hand market being entirely taken out. There's no promotional material or the interestingly and artistically designed manuals which I've absolutely loved in the past. One many will be familiar with is the gta maps though there have been some much more interesting examples throught gaming history.

Music used to have some great physical copy perks which many will have never seen these days and don't know what they're missing. It's a shamw for them. Also the digitisation of music, whilst making it more accessible in many ways has also cheapened the virtuous value of music by saturating the 'market' space and creating a kind of throw away element to it. When it's harder to obtain and there are fewer examples of it it creates an environment where more is poured into any one piece of music and its value and integrity is much higher. It carries meaning and is even somewhat educational. Unfortunately I think music these days does 'educate' but I'd maybe argue it's more influencing that educating and pushes us further towards a population made up of predominantly narcissists. Perhaps that's me letting my personal opinion creep in there. I don't know.

All this aside, I do think there's an argument for taking physical copies of media out of the running foe the sake of the environment. The amount of landfill created must be high. Some happy medium should be reached but as the motivations of the producers are based in milking as much income out of as little value provided possible things will never change unless we vote with our wallets!

 

[DynamicDepression]

I used to hate it too at first but it's become extremely convenient for binging shows or movie series in ways that free/piracy websites couldn't even hope to accomplish.

Really? I've found the opposite to be true. There are so many streaming services nowadays that nothing is in the same place except for on piracy websites.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Really? I've found the opposite to be true. There are so many streaming services nowadays that nothing is in the same place except for on piracy websites.

The fact that there are so many different services now does suck but for the stuff I can watch on these services: autoplay, skip intro buttons, and captions are absolute staples for me now with my watching experience.

 

[Smart No More]

Many piracy streaming sites are introducing decent features though I've never seen the skip intro option so far. Captions and autoplay features are actually above and beyond that of Netflix in some cases though. Ads are also not an issue if using adblockers.

Foe me, I'm less bothered about films and shows being on streaming services. Partially because the physical copies do still exist even if they're not as feature rich anymore and partially because they're more easily stored on hardrives due to less restrictive (massive) file size. Blure rays do get pretty hefty in 4k though.

It is frustrating to have good content spread across various paid services though but you can always pay for a short term on them and get more than your moneys worth in that short period. They don't all warrant long term subscription for me. Honestly, if there's something on any of them that I really like I'll download it via piracy and store it because in fairness I paid for it and the downside of streaming services is that they don't offer an indefinate library. Things come and go. A service that offered everything indefinitely would actually kill all the others off IMHO. Especially if they're able to provide new exclusives like a Netflix of Disney. I guess if they leave the exclusives to those services and just acted as a life long library of later adopted media they could live alongside them. I would not be surprises if Netflix or Disney end up offering an add on service to do just that for a significant extra fee. If it wasn't for licencing issues I am certain they'd have been doing it for years.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Many piracy streaming sites are introducing decent features though I've never seen the skip intro option so far. Captions and autoplay features are actually above and beyond that of Netflix in some cases though. Ads are also not an issue if using adblockers.

Captions require extra downloading and sadly a lot of the sites I used to use have Adblock blockers now.

 

[Smart No More]

Captions require extra downloading and sadly a lot of the sites I used to use have Adblock blockers now.

There's a site that I use which doesn't require downloading captions and adblocking works. It can be a little tempremental with the adblocking. Like the odd new tab window might open when you first click play. Aside from that it's been working really well. Can send you a pm if you like.